By David Kelly

Saturday November 08 2008

Remember the betting investigation into Alex Ferguson and his French players? Thought not. It will be difficult -- if not next to impossible, given football's appalling record in this arena -- to ever discover whether St Patrick's Athletic's players conspired to cheat their employers and their supporters.

Yet if it is elicited that players being currently targeted by allegations -- and there were familiar names emitting concurrently from the mouths of the sadly depleted attendance on the banks of the Camac last night -- did scribble their odds on a betting slip, they may as well have signed their own sporting death warrant.

More -- and this may even hold should it only be revealed that mere intent were displayed -- they could be said to have penned a suicide note, not just for their own club, but for the very league itself of which they are a member.

Aside from the unutterably laughable irony that an alleged betting ring would be uncovered at a club sponsored by Ireland's leading betting firm -- one whose chairman reports directly to the club's owner -- the ramifications could be fatal within and without the boundaries of Dublin 8 as the latest shame is visited upon our country's supposedly senior professional league.

Slump

St Pats' owner, Garrett Kelleher, is swiftly discovering that although the political winds of change may be blowing through Barack Obama's home town, Chicago's property slump shows little sign of abating.

His fabled accommodation wonder, the Spire, putatively the world's tallest building, may never be concluded and certainly will never be fully occupied, let alone sold -- it is currently so burdened with legal claims that locals have labelled it the "Lien-ing Tower of Chicago".

If he had not previously given momentary thought to whether his business life needed the inconvenience of a seriously haemorrhaging unit in a dysfunctional competition, then the headlines wired to his desk as he awoke yesterday morning may have proven the final straw.

A few hours later across the Liffey, Bohemians' title-winning lap of honour was rudely interrupted by the not entirely unexpected judicial decision in favour of another property developer to whom, it is now obviously apparent, the club had mortgaged their future in search of the cheap thrill guaranteed by instant success.

They had benefited from two payments in excess of €1m from the building firm Danninger, believed to be non-refundable, which allowed significant investment on players over the last two seasons.

All of this was predicated on the legal dispute finding in their favour. To which one may query the difference between this attempt at reckless risk-taking to that of any idiotic player fancying a punt on his craven team to throw a game for a few quid?

Principles

The answer is that there is none. For both are predicated on principles inherently opposed to the concept of fair play, decent administration and sporting obligation.

And if these repugnant principles of greed, dishonesty and corruption are displayed within the boardrooms of the country's leading clubs, then it is no surprise that some players within such a system may become similarly affected.

Drogheda United recently made a similarly impossible leap in the imagination when assuming that somehow their supposedly incontrovertible right to grow financial strength could lay waste the planning laws as they, like Bohemians, intoxicated themselves on instant success without worrying about a potential hangover.

These examples, as we now know, are not alone in over-extending financial reality in search of a quixotic notion of success. And what else is this if not an utter breach of trust with the very stakeholders -- supporters and sponsors -- who, so patiently, have so steadfastly kept the league one small step away from slipping into a permanent coma?

How else can one view the recent title successes of Shelbourne, Cork City, Drogheda United and, now, Bohemians, as being anything else but a fraudulent destruction of the very principles upon which sport is supposed to be constructed?

Unfortunately there are some who will see in these latest farragoes of wanton self-immolation a popular whim of media outlets to denigrate the league, as if it were some honourable concern worthy of perennial moral approbation.

They will point to Chelsea's billion-pound debt or the exigencies of fatally flawed structures within other footballing cultures as apologia for this country's recidivist tendency towards self-destruction and dysfunctional behaviour.

Such blindness is almost as undignified as the clear-focused intent by those in authority to either comply with, or else entirely ignore, a festering culture of deceit and dishonesty which permeates from top to bottom in almost every facet of the domestic senior game here.

How much longer must those dwindling numbers who profess enduring faith in the league be allowed to wallow in such ignorance, when not even the FAI nor its constituent parts can impersonate normality for any decent length of time?

Last night too, they gathered in Tolka Park to celebrate the last hours of nomadic existence for this country's most famous football institution and yet how can we be sure that Shamrock Rovers never return to the sorry place which rendered them homeless for a generation and, at one stage, as financially miscreant as so many of their fellow clubs?

There is, as unfortunate recent history suggests, no guarantee that this may be so despite their supporters' honourable resuscitation since rescuing the club from familiar ignominy. That their shining light -- Tallaght Stadium -- took so long to be constructed, via Dail hearings, complicated financial dealings and court cases, is an ironic emblem of the league's plight.

The FAI have been rendered impotent since taking control away from the clubs; this week the clubs convened to seemingly regain some of the authority ceded to their toothless guardians.

What a comedy indeed! One would be tempted to suggest that they wind up the whole exercise and start again. For, despite all the progress made on the field of play, we now know that this expensive pursuit was based on a mirage.

Constructed on a base of sand, the whole crumbling edifice is slowly disintegrating. Those of us who pointed out this very fact take no pleasure in being confronted with this undeniable truth.

Neither do we have an answer. Rip it up and start again? It may be the only way.

- David Kelly